But in trying to push her, I had become so enraptured in her perfect body and the longing in her eyes I hadn’t been able to stop myself from kissing the smooth skin of her throat. I hadn’t been able to stop from fisting my hand in her long hair, and then she’d moaned . . .
Those moans and whimpers had fueled my need for a girl I couldn’t have in the way she was making me want her.
The women weren’t allowed any type of pleasure from us for the first year. It made them want more, expect more, and then it made it harder for them to remember that what was between us was only a bond through ownership and not a relationship.
I had known that, but I hadn’t been able to stop. Hadn’t been able to stop from wanting to give her everything . . . only to be reminded how I’d already destroyed it all.
And now a man who made me look like a goddamn saint was with the girl who was terrified of me.
My fingers were twitching by the time we drove into the garage, and I was stepping out of the car before it finished rolling to a stop.
I ran through the garage into the house—and my heart stopped and blood ran cold when I heard loud sobs followed by her screams.
“Briar!”
Chapter 15
Fallen Angel
Briar
“This can be scary at the beginning, I know, but it isn’t the beginning anymore,” William criticized. “You are behind where you should be. Do you want to stay in this room? Do you want to show Lucas that you can’t move on with him? Now stop crying.”
I couldn’t, I hadn’t been able to for some time now.
My head bowed as sobs tormented my body. My arms and shoulders ached, and my right calf was cramping, but I knew he had no plans to release me unless I did what he was asking.
Sometime before—what had seemed like hours, but I knew wasn’t—William had grabbed my arm and forced me across the room to an alcove that I had always thought was a small, unfinished closet. Now I was rethinking the purpose of the space. A metal bar ran the length of the alcove high above me, and after tearing my comforter away, William had stripped off his belt and used it to tie my hands to the bar as I’d screamed and kicked at him.
He had looked at me as if my kicks were nothing more than a kitten pawing at him.
I had been on the balls of my feet ever since to take away the feeling that my arms were about to be ripped from their sockets, but my calves and thighs were shaking and I didn’t know how much longer I could stand like that.
“Stop crying,” William demanded again. “You have to be comfortable naked. You have to be comfortable with him watching you. You can’t cry while he does that. Do you understand?”
I nodded, but my tears fell harder. I could hear the devil’s words in William’s, and I knew William had not lied to me.
William had to be Lucas’s mentor.
The same words, the same demands, the same heartless tone. I found soon that my heart was big enough to hate more than one person.
“You have to look up,” he gritted out, and suddenly he was in front of me, yanking my head up. “You have to make eye contact; you have to be proud; you cannot be scared. Stop crying!” He released my head, only for the back of his hand to come across my right cheek.
The force of his hit stunned me and made me lose the balance I’d been struggling to maintain on my toes. A sharp cry tore from my chest when it felt like my arms would tear from the sockets—my shoulders bearing all my weight until I could get back on my toes. Blood coated my tongue from where I’d bitten down on my cheek, and I had to fight to catch my breath when my sobs came faster than before.
“I have never had a girl struggle this much, or for this long, with this part of the process,” he said in a bored tone when my cries became steady again.
“I can’t do this,” I sobbed.
“You have to. Stop crying. People stare at themselves in the mirror all the time. Studying their bodies, finding imperfections,” he lectured harshly. “Think of Lucas as that mirror.”
Hard sobs continued to force their way from my chest, and I shook my head quickly. “I—”
William gripped my cheeks roughly in his hand, forcing me to look at him, ignoring the way I tried to jerk away from him when my cheek smarted from the action. “This no longer belongs to you. It belongs to Lucas, and he does what he wants with it. You no longer hide it. Do you understand?”
I couldn’t respond but tried to nod against his firm hold.
He released my face so forcefully it was as if he shoved my head back. But just as fast, his hands were on my breasts, painfully squeezing as he tested their weight and squeezed my nipples.
“No,” I yelled, my voice hoarse as I tried in vain to twist away from his hold. “No, no, stop!”
“These no longer belong to you. They belong to him, and he does what he wants with them. You no longer hide them. Do you understand?”
“Stop touch—”
“I asked you a question, and you will answer me, girl,” he seethed. “When Lucas asks you a question, you answer. You do not make demands.” He paused for only a second before repeating, “Do you understand?”
I nodded numbly as the room filled with my cries. I choked over my tears and thrashed in the alcove when he suddenly cupped my sex, one of his fingers sliding into my folds just as roughly as he’d touched the rest of me.
“Stop!”
“This no long—”
Long ago memories flashed, and I screamed, “Don’t touch me!”
“Briar!”
My head snapped up at the loud boom I would have sworn shook the house, and my heart raced. More tears pricked at my eyes—these different, these from the intense relief that pounded through me.
“Briar!” Lucas yelled again, closer.
William stepped back leisurely to stand silently a few feet away from me, looking at the closed doorway to my room expectantly. He almost seemed bored as he waited.
The devil, however, was anything but bored. His dark eyes were murderous when he charged into the room, but the look fell when he saw me being forced to stand in the alcove.
“Briar,” he whispered, and quickly closed the distance between us. His hands went to my face first then my neck as his eyes searched my face wildly. “Are you okay? It’s going to be okay,” he assured me before I could answer.
“She needed to learn,” William said from behind Lucas, and like a switch had been flipped, the murderous look was back in his eyes.
Lucas wrapped an arm around my waist to lift me off the ground as he untied the belt, and a muscle in his jaw popped while his nostrils flared. “This is too far; this is outside the rules. She’s not yours to fucking touch,” he hissed. His eyes never left my face, but it was clear his words weren’t meant for me.
As soon as my hands were free, I let my arms fall like dead weights around Lucas’s neck, curled my legs around his body, and sobbed against his white button-down shirt.
“It’s okay.” He ran his hand over my hair soothingly while he walked me back across the room. “It’s okay.” William began talking, but Lucas gritted out, “Enough!”
William continued on smugly. “It worked. You are welcome. She’s progressed greatly today if she’s also clinging to you rather than trying to get away.”